When Sarah Diamond was a child, she often accompanied her grandmother and mother to their Rensselaer County polling location for their shifts as poll workers. Besides being able to see friends and neighbors as they gathered to exercise their civic duty, the promise of a slice of “election cake” kept the fidgety proclivities of childhood at bay.
“My grandmother used to make election cakes for her polling place,” Diamond said of the dense, yeasted cake studded with dried fruits that is as much a forgotten relic of past elections as losing candidates. Diamond’s grandmother would slice pieces of the cake for both her fellow poll workers and voters, and the act of casting a ballot became more than just a chore. “It was more of a social time. You would sit with people in the community and have tea, coffee and cake and then be on your way. Now you go in and vote, and that’s it. Election cake symbolizes the day and what the day means,” Diamond said.
Election cake was a holdover in New England colonies from British Puritans, said Leslie Landrigan, the co-founder of the New England Historical Society website. “Between 1700 and 1750 there is not a lot of information on daily life,” Landrigan said, but the availability of spices, sugar, rum and molasses - along with locally produced brandy - is well known, and it would not be uncommon for women to come together to produce cakes akin to election cake for community events. Landrigan said that Puritan culture did not celebrate religious holidays but feasts and treats would be offered during “training days,” when men in the community gathered for musket and militia drills.
Jessica Reed, a culinary historian focused on cake and author of “The Baker’s Appendix: The Essential Kitchen Companion, with Deliciously Dependable, Infinitely Adaptable Recipes,” said that the cake in early American times would have been known as a “great cake,” pulling from English techniques and processes, and later became known as “muster cake” for training day celebrations. “There are only so many ways to make a cake. It’s the name you give it that makes it unique,” Reed said.
Landrigan and Reed both said that the most direct point of origin for election cake in America is Hartford, Conn., where Amelia Simmons first published her book, “American Cookery,” in 1796. (A second edition of the book was published later that year in Albany, said Schenectady County historian Christ Leonard.) The book lists a recipe for election cake that includes 14 pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of butter, plentiful dried fruits and brandy or rum. It is a yeasted cake, which allows the cake to rise (before the invention of baking powder), and has warm spices infused into the batter. It is similar to a fruitcake, but much lighter in consistency and not aged the way a fruitcake would be. Catharine Beecher (sister to Harriet Beecher Stowe) also wrote about election cake during her years living in the Hartford area. Landrigan said large cakes that could serve dozens of people were popular at a time when residents of rural areas might travel long distances to vote and would have needed to be fed.
Reed said that election cake, and other yeasted cakes of the era, were popular only until the mid-19th century, and the practice of serving election cake at village events waned. “Cakes of that sort really fall out of favor when chemical leaveners become available,” she said. Landrigan said that cooking technologies changed the way people ate and cooked, and a cake recipe that takes several days to make (in letting rudimentary hearth ovens come to temperature and in preparing the yeast) lost favor to quicker cooking practices.
After a century and a half of near-obscurity, the 2016 presidential election gave election cake its second life, as bakers around the country riffed on now-President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “Make American Great Again,” with the idea to “Make America Cake Again.” At OWL Bakery in Asheville, N.C., bakers Susannah Gebhart and Maia Surdam prepared election cake to sell, with portions of the proceeds going to the League of Women Voters, and published their recipe online for other bakeries to produce and sell. Richard Miscovich, of Johnson and Wales University culinary program in R.I., offered the cake as part of a presentation at the 2016 Maine Kneading Conference for bread bakers, which is were Saratoga Springs resident Otis Maxwell first learned of the cake. Maxwell reminisced about living in California and wearing an “I Voted” sticker, which would, “get me a free doughnut or something,” he said. The concept of an election cake reminded him of those days, and he made one himself to commemorate the 2016 election. He documented his baking on his website BurntMyFingers.com. “I felt then that I was fired up, but I’m ten times more fired up now,” he said, and has already made an election cake for this voting cycle to help quell pre-ballot nerves.
Last year, Diamond made 20 election cakes for her catering clients, most of them being over 70 years old, and is accepting orders for cakes until Sunday on her website, www.cakesandcateringbysarah.com. “It’s something so unique and I wish people would get into it more,” she said. Reed agrees: “It’s a shame that you don’t see more people baking it. It’s such a cool thing,” she said. The idea of making a cake with yeast might be intimidating to today’s American palate, where cakes are cloyingly sweet with generous slathers of frosting, but in an era of politics that seem to balk at tradition, a slice of historical convention “deserves a resurgence,” Reed said.
Deanna Fox is a food and agriculture journalist. www.foxonfood.com @DeannaNFox
Election Cake Recipe
Adapted from a recipe by Culinary Institute of America
Makes 8-10 servings from a 10-inch Bundt pan
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, divided
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cups dried fruit, including cranberries, golden raisins, and blueberries
1/2 cup brandy or American whiskey
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup milk
1 package (3/4 ounce or 2 1/4 teaspoons) instant yeast
1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour, sifted and divided
2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground clove
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) soft unsalted butter, cut into cubes
3 eggs
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- Combine 1/2 cup of the granulated sugar with the 1/2 cup of water in a small saucepan. Simmer over medium-high heat until sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from heat. Place the dried fruit in a large bowl. Add this sugar-water mixture and brandy or whiskey to the bowl with the fruit. Stir and set aside.
- In a medium mixing bowl, combine warm water and milk. Combine yeast with 1 cup of whole-wheat flour and add it to the milk mixture. Sprinkle the remaining whole-wheat flour on top. Set aside to allow the yeast to ferment until the yeast breaks through the surface of the flour, approximately 30 minutes.
- Grease and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan. Set aside. Sift together the remaining dry ingredients and set aside. Drain the fruit mixture; reserve the syrup for later use as a glaze.
- With a hand mixer or stand mixer with paddle attachment, beat together the butter and the remaining 1 cup of granulated sugar until light in texture. Add eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula after each addition. Turn the mixer to low speed and add the flour and yeast mixture and mix until fully combined. Add the remaining sifted dry ingredients. The batter will be stiff. Stir in the drained fruit.
- Place the batter in the prepared bundt pan, cover, and set in a warm area to allow the cake to rise, approximately 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare the glaze by combining the 1 cup confectioners’ sugar and 2 tablespoons of the syrup reserved from the drained fruit in a medium bowl. Stir until smooth and set aside.
- Bake the cake for 45 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
- Allow to cool in the pan for 5 minutes and transfer cake to a wire rack to cool. When cool, lightly brush with reserved syrup, and top with glaze.
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